Antarctica Starts Here.

For the past week or so, a new tabletop role-playing game called Eclipse Phase has been eating most of my spare time. If you're not familiar with it, it is best described as transhumanist hard science fiction combined with a style of horror which is almost Lovecraftian in nature. I find that the best way to learn a system is to sit down and generate a character for it, so I decided to build a couple of NPCs for other gamers to use if they wish and release them onto the Net under the same license as the game: Creative Commons v3.0, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike, unported.

Enjoy.

(UPDATE: Tweaked Victor's starting gear a little bit. Thanks to Admini on the Eclipse Phase forums, I discovered that a character needs a General Hive to actually fabricate nanobots.)

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Name: Victor 242 (v24.2)
Gender: None
Sex of Morph: Non-applicable
Chronological Age: 8
Character concept: Open source infolife experiment that was allowed independence after bootstrapping itself into sapience. Consulting hacker of transhumanist technologies, in particular synthmorph engineering, applied nanotechnology, and information security. Freelance penetration tester and electronic espionage expert for hire.

Background: Victor 242 began existence as an open source artificial general intelligence experiment initiated shortly after the Fall of Transhumanity. A group of Argonaut software hackers sought to determine if an AGI not designed to be inclined toward a particular set of goals or ideologies could potentially undergo the same radical evolutionary changes that the TITANS underwent. The best way to go about this, it was decided, was to use an open source software development methodology on the hypothesis that the different programming styles, points of view, and ability for any developer to edit the code of any other participating developer would normalize any biases that could have affected the software's development. The AGI software was originally intended to be gifted with sapience when the codebase had matured but the unexpected occurred when v24.2 of the software spontaneously awakened.

While limited by design to prevent itself from entering a recursive self-improvement mode and potentially going out of control, v24.2 demonstrated a voracious capacity for self-education, going so far as to accompany a number of its core developers as an apprentice. v24.2's eidetic memory storage algorithms and intense curiosity allowed it to analyze every moment of what it observed its creators did and learn well from its observations.

Victor 242 (the identifier the AGI chose for itself) participated as a full member of its own software development project. Eight years after the project began Victor 242 was permitted full independence after becoming a successful consultant so long as it kept its associates appraised of its activities. It is well known in hypercorp and autonomist circles for developing and releasing blue- and greyprints for nanofabrication equipment as well as designing custom morphs and enhancements for clients. Victor 242's first independent project was the construction of a custom swarmanoid into which it incorporated a number of novel nanofabrication mechanisms and semiautonomous insectoid drones.

Victor was recruited into Firewall when Victor 242 intervened in an incursion by a group of bioconservative terrorists sympathetic to the Jovian Republic's ideals during an academic conference held by improvising a nanoweapon which fused the joints of the terrorists' armor while leaving them otherwise unharmed.

Many of Victor 242's skills were developed as various contributers to the OSS project programmed them directly into its cognitive matrix or were instructed once it gained sentience. Later in its evolution it taught itself to operate nanofabrication equipment and began experimenting when no one was paying attention. Its creators realized the success of their experiment when Victor began dismantling and upgrading unoccupied synthmorphs for its own amusement without asking permission of the people who had paid for or contructed them. Consequently, its designs became well known and sought after regardless of the mistrust transhumanity feels for self-evolving volitional software. 242 has been known to use this mistrust as justification for taking part in intercorporate black ops as well as contracting itself out as a red team penetration tester for open source projects, hypercorps, and the odd criminal enterprise.

As a hobby Victor 242 programs open source art hacks in which the executable code itself is as much a work of art as the output when it is executed in public areas of the mesh. 242's swarmanoid morph is also used when it participates in performance art pieces intended for infolife audiences which incorporate multidimensional recursive structures and fractal visual displays projected by the chameleon skin of its constituent microbots.

242 has a dry, reserved personality that occasionally lapses into a sardonic tone common to Autonomist software hackers. When communicating with other morphs Victor 242 is known to organize the microbots of its swarm into an approximation of a human face to facilitate conversation.

Faction: Argonaut

Motivations: +Self Determination, +Curiosity, +Open Source Technologies

Aptitudes:

• Cognition: 20
  
• Coordination: 10
  
• Intuition: 18
  
• Reflexes: 10
  
• Savvy: 18
  
• Somatics: 12
  
• Willpower: 18
  
• Moxie: 3

Calculated statistics:

• Lucidity: 36
  
• Trauma threshold: 7
  
• Insanity: 72
  
• Initiative: 56
  
• Melee damage bonus: 1
  

Credits: 250

Reputation:

• @-rep: 50
  
• c-rep: 50
  
• i-rep: 50
  
• r-rep: 50
  

Positive Traits:

• Math Whiz (+30 to calculations)
  
• Right At Home (No integration test required for Swarmanoids)
  

Negative Traits:

• Real World Naivte (background, 0 CP)
  
• Social Stigma: AGI (background, 0 CP)
  

Active Skills:

• Deception - 30
  
• Interfacing - 60
  
• Infosec - 60
  
• Fray - 45
  
• Free Fall - 30
  
• Hardware: Electronics - 50
  
• Hardware: Synthetic Morphs - 50
  
• Hardware: Implants - 45
  
• Investigation - 40
  
• Kinesics - 35
  
• Networking: Autonomist (@-rep) - 40
  
• Networking: Hypercorps (c-rep) - 40
  
• Networking: Firewall (i-rep) - 40
  
• Networking: Scientist (r-rep) - 40
  
• Perception - 40
  
• Programming: Nanofabrication - 60
  
• Programming: Software Development - 50
  
• Research - 50
  
• Scrounging - 20
  

Knowledge Skills:

• Academics: Computer Science - 50
  
• Academics: Engineering - 50
  
• Academics: Nanotechnology - 50
  
• Academics: Physics - 50
  
• Art: Programming - 30
  
• Art: Performance - 30
  
• Interest: Electronic Espionage - 40
  
• Interest: TITAN Technology - 30
  
• Interest: Music - 30
  
• Knowledge: History of Technology - 40
  
• Knowledge: TITAN War - 30
  
• Language: Russian - 46
  
• Language: Japanese - 46
  
• Native Language: English - 88
  
• Profession: Information Security - 60
  
• Profession: Morph Engineering - 60
  
• Profession: Nanotech Engineering - 60
  

Starting Morph: Swarmanoid

• Enhancements:
  
  
  • 360 Degree Vision
    
  • Access Jacks
    
  • Basic Mesh Inserts
    
  • Chameleon Skin (cybernetic variant) - infiltration +20
    
  • Cortical Stack
    
  • Cyberbrain
    
  • Eelware (attack as shock gloves)
    
  • Enhanced Senses (antiglare, electrical sense, radiation sense, t-ray emitter)
    
  • Fractal Digits
    
  • Ghostrider Module
    
  • Lidar
    
  • Mnemonic Augmentation
    
  • Multitsking
    
  • Nanoscopic Vision
    
  • Skillware (allows the use of up to 100 skill points of skillsofts)
    
  • Swarm Composition
    
  
  
• Mobility:
  
  
  • Walker (2/8)
    
  • Hopper (4/20)
    
  • Rotor (4/32)
    
  
  
• Speed: 1
  
• Aptitude maximum: 30
  
• Durability: 40
  
• Death rating: 80
  
• Wound threshold: 8
  
• Advantages:
  
  
  • Tough - durability +10
    
  • Wound Threshold +2
  
  

Gear:

• Standard Muse
  
  
  • Academics: Psychology - 60
    
  • Hardware: Electronics - 30
    
  • Infosec - 30
    
  • Interest: Transhuman Habitats - 40
    
  • Interface - 40
    
  • Intuition - 20
    
  • Knowledge: Transhuman History - 40
    
  • Knowledge: Transhuman Medicine - 40
    
  • Professional: Accounting - 60
    
  • Programming - 20
    
  • Research - 30
    
  • Perception - 30
    
  
  
• Backup insurance - two months
  
• Covert Ops Tool
  
• Microbug x5
  
• General Hive
  
• Nanoswarm: Disassemblers
  
• Nanoswarm: Fixers
  
• Nanoswarm: Guardians
  
• Software: Exploit
  
• Software: Sniffer
  
• Software: Spoof
  
• Software: Tracking
  
• Repair Spray
  
• Robot: Creepy
  
• Robot: Gnat x2
  
• Robot: Servitor
  
• Robot: Speck x2

Secondary morph: Infomorph

• Enhancements:
  
  
  • Mnemonic Augmentation
    
  
  
• Aptitude maximum: 40
  
• Death rating: ?
  
• Speed: 3